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Parting ways from the better-known collaborator in a performance partnership is a hazardous business. Larry David went through it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and deeply sorrowful chamber piece from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater narrates the almost agonizing tale of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally shrunk in height – but is also at times filmed positioned in an unseen pit to gaze upward sadly at heightened personas, addressing the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer once played the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with Hart’s riffs on the subtle queer themes of the movie Casablanca and the excessively cheerful stage show he just watched, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Hart is multifaceted: this film clearly contrasts his gayness with the heterosexual image created for him in the 1948 stage show the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the renowned musical theater composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was responsible for matchless numbers like The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart’s alcoholism, undependability and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers broke with him and partnered with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of theater and film hits.

Psychological Complexity

The picture imagines the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s opening night NYC crowd in 1943, observing with jealous anguish as the performance continues, loathing its insipid emotionality, detesting the exclamation mark at the conclusion of the name, but dishearteningly conscious of how lethally effective it is. He understands a smash when he sees one – and feels himself descending into failure.

Even before the intermission, Hart sadly slips away and makes his way to the pub at the establishment Sardi's where the balance of the picture occurs, and expects the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! troupe to show up for their after-party. He is aware it is his showbiz duty to praise Richard Rodgers, to feign all is well. With suave restraint, the performer Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what each understands is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his pride in the guise of a brief assignment writing new numbers for their existing show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the barkeeper who in conventional manner attends empathetically to Hart's monologues of acerbic misery
• Actor Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the idea for his kids' story the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays Elizabeth Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Ivy League pupil with whom the film conceives Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in affection

Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Surely the universe couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who desires Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her experiences with young men – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives observational satisfaction in hearing about these young men but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie tells us about a factor seldom addressed in films about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the dreadful intersection between career and love defeat. However at some level, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has attained will persist. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This may turn into a live show – but who would create the songs?

The film Blue Moon premiered at the London film festival; it is released on 17 October in the United States, 14 November in the United Kingdom and on the 29th of January in Australia.